Monday 7 March 2011
A little fur flies in Senate koala inquiry
On 17 November 2010 the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications was asked to conduct the Inquiry into the status, health and sustainability of Australia's koala population which is scheduled to report in June 2011.
Submissions have now closed with only 69 received and they hint at widely divergent positions bordering on the combative in some instances:
Koala Research Centre of Central Queensland
The status of the koala is uncertain, nationally. Local and regional populations are declining. There is not adequate data to address the IUCN criteria in any consideration of the formal status of the koala. Delaying any reclassification until data meets IUCN criteria produces a crisis driven response with limited capacity to recover the species. A proactive approach from the Commonwealth is recommended including: a move away from the IUCN criterion based assessment of the koala's status, proactive implementation of the actions of the national koala strategy within the Commonwealth's sphere of influence, Commonwealth resourcing of research and community organizations pursuing the objectives of the national koala strategy, support for the establishment of a network of koala sentinel sites monitoring trends in population and habitat status. A strategic review of the approach to managing the koala and its habitat is required taking account of the distinctly different needs in (a) the over abundant, genetically depauperate race of the koala in South Australia and Victoria, (b) the expanding urban and industrial footprint in predominantly coastal eastern Australia, and (c) the rural and regional western and northern habitats affected by climate extremes, fire and drought.
Board Member, NSW Northern Rivers Catchment Management Authority
When questioned about this practice recently, DECCW’s Director of Landscapes and Ecosystem Management Tom Grosskopf commented in the local newspaper (Advocate 29 Dec. 2010) that “the Coffs Harbour (Koala) Plan of Management did not fall under the NSW environmental planning policy but rather the council had its own detailed plan and had written themselves out of the state plan.”
Far from writing itself out of the state plan, between 1996 and 2000, Coffs Harbour City Council(CHCC) undertook the preparation of a comprehensive Koala Plan of Management (KPoM)according to NSW State Government guidelines: “Procedures for Preparing Comprehensive Koala Plans of Management under State Environmental Planning Policy 1995 (SEPP) No.44-Koala Habitat Protection.
Ms Paulette Oldfield
A development was approved by my local council in Daisy Hill, Qld, 2007 which sat in the middle of prime habitat. http://thesanctuarydaisyhill.com/index.html (See attached articles) Over 5000 residents voiced their disapproval of this decision but the council ignored their constituents and forged ahead. Illegal clearing then occurred on this site with the developer NOT being held accountable or forced to pay any recompense (RIX Developments, Gold Coast). Rix Development also did not follow council orders with regards to spotter/catcher resources on site at the time of clearing. Again, nothing was done about this. A bulldozer waited until a Koala came out of the tree before the bulldozer knocked it down. This tree was over 80 years old. The Koala had nowhere to go.
Rix Developments
Firstly thank you for forwarding the comments in relation to our development at Daisy Hill, Queensland and the opportunity to reply. The information supplied by the submitter is grossly inaccurate and misleading.
Name Withheld
Lord Mayor and Councillors, my name is <?> and I am not a Greenie. I am also not an Activist. Up until now you could probably have described me as one of the masses. Up until now I would have been quite happy to mind my own business, raising my family in quiet peace in the suburbs of Brisbane.This all changed for me about six months ago when a newly created company gained approval from Brisbane City Council to develop the parcel of land on the up hill slopes adjacent to my home.
Property Council of Australia
The Property Council is strongly opposed to the continuation of the listing of endangered species on a jurisdictional basis. This is in part due to the fragmented review of endangered flora and fauna which fails to deliver a national snapshot of the sustainability and health of these species.
Urban Development Institute of Australia
UDIA (Qld) does not make claims as to present Koala population numbers or other scientific aspects. We do however seek that any decision is made on sound scientific information. It is clear to us, that at least in Queensland, issues around Koala population protection are very substantially affected by emotional or other views based on values which can lead to incorrect outcomes. It is critical that this hyperbole is stripped away and true scientific measures utilised.
National Association of Forest Industries
In addition, the relative scale of activity and landscape connectivity of ‘managed’ and formal conservation reserves (e.g. national parks) should be taken into account at a landscape level. The sustainable harvesting of forests represents less than one per cent annually of the forest estate potentially available for wood production in any one year (in all states and territories) and may enhance the habitat for a range of species through the provision of a diversity of mixed age classes, forest structure and food resources across the landscape.
Sunday 6 March 2011
Education revolution falls at the first hurdle
It has always been hard to ignore the fact that federal government funding of non–government schools comes at the expense of our public schools and the new My School financial info confirms this. Take two Lismore high schools with the same postcode – one receives a grand total of $6,917 in federal funding per student and the other receives $1,467 per student from the same source. No prize for guessing which is the public secondary school with a higher number of disadvantaged students and which is the school backed by a wealthy religious organisation.
Will
Lismore
Looking back on a little alleged slander, defamation and libel
With so much abuse being hurled both inside and outside Federal Parliament these day, I thought I would take a wander through Pandora’s Trove to see how matters stood in the past with regards to civility, political or otherwise.
I uncovered these little snippets in Australian newspapers of yore………
'SLANDER' FEBRUARY 1844
The disgraceful encouragement to slander which prevails in this colony, is much more publicly injurious than it is supposed to be. That it is privately so (of course with certain exceptions; as for example that before us, for Mr. Lowe’s well-known independence 'fortunately places him beyond the reach of its baneful influence) is obvious. What “confidence" in each other can exist in any community where encouragement to the most slanderous reports of each other ' exists’ by the whispering away reputation in the first instance, and when the poison has been sufficiently privately administered [powerful….] then by certain portion of the Press has been mainly instrumental in this deadly evil, we regret to be compelled to acknowledge. When an individual to be assassinated is beyond the reach of personal slander, his circumstances or some other means of injury are assailed. The atrocious abuse of all connected with the Press who have attempted to check this detestable mode of warfare, and the great avowal that any newspaper writer who dared to oppose the opinions of others, or of their friends, was to be subjected to every unmanly abuse, has certainly in a great degree led to this. Argument not being met by reply but by slander, the most base and cowardly, of the writer either known or supposed - a system which if even thought of in England would have produced general execration the writer, not the writing, being the object of assault - has rendered personality the only mode of newspaper warfare. Yet when those with whom so diabolical a course originated are themselves subjected to their own course of practice, how loudly do they exclaim against what, as respects them, is only fair retaliation - only applying their own practice to themselves. It is this method of meeting argument by stabbing the arguer - of silencing an opponent, by destroying him either in his reputation or his circumstances - it is this exhibition of highly sublimed malice which has rendered a residence in Van Diemen's Land hateful in the eyes of the whole civilised world. We know that even in China our colony is viewed as an abode unfit for even commonly civilised man, owing to the ruffian system of personal abuse which a portion, happily certainly only a portion, of its periodical press has exhibited. But it is not to the Press alone that this ferocity of slander is confined. In street conversation, should any individual have unfortunately adopted opinions adverse to those of another, "rascal," " scoundrel," " villain," are gentle terms in comparison to those with which he is assailed. Woe to him who dares to question the claims to virgin purity of those who thus assail an opponent. As the malice engendered is without limit, so also is the method of effecting its detestable purpose. Unhappily the appetite for slander increases as it is fed. It is an ordinary question put to individuals connected with newspapers, "Have you anything ‘spicy ' to-day ?" meaning have you assailed private character - have you committed any moral murder ? Is it not the reproach of daily occurrence, " Your news-paper is too tame for me : I understand there is some delightful " spice " in the _________ of to-morrow : that's the paper for me !" This is a frightful exhibition of the morbid appetite for slander, which renders the colony a pandemonium - an abode unfitting for any but the malicious and the reckless!-Murray's Review.
Slander Gang JULY 1921
The grab, spout and slander gang are waking up to the fact that their vile methods have disgusted fair-minded residents. But like the rattle-snake, and particularly that artful dodger, the hoop-snake, that takes its tail in its mouth and rolls along to reach its intended victim, the gang's venom is so impetuous that they cannot stop themselves. With the lie on their tongues, and the " muck- rake '' in their hands, they roll on to their ignoble doom, which, happily is now not far off. In impotent rage, after innumerable vain tilts with their swelled but brainless heads against the wind- mill of truth and fact, they insult and belie all and sundry, including the three hundred petitioners for an adjustment of the trouble the gang has aggravated. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, etc
DEFAMATION AND LIBEL SEPTEMBER 1927
ALLEGATIONS BY MR. WILLIS
MR. MINAHAN'S STATEMENTS RESENTED
Charges against an unnamed New South Wales Cabinet Minister of having solicited a bribe, have been resented by Mr. A. C. Willis, and writs for defamation and libel, claiming £20,000 damages have been issued.
Sydney, September 19. Mr. A. C. Willis, vice-president of the Executive Council, instructed his solicitors to-day to issue a writ for £10,000 for alleged defamation, against Mr. P. J.Minahan, M.L.A. and another for £10,000 again Smith's Newspapers Ltd. for alleged libel. The writs were issued this afternoon. Mr. Willis stated that he observed that Mr. Minahan had made a charge against a member of past and present Cabinets of soliciting a bribe from the Wine and Spirit Growers’ Defence Association. As he was the only member of both Cabinets, apart from the Premier, and as the paper which published Mr. Minahan's charges referred to the unnamed Minister as a colleague of Mr. Lang, the charge, he alleged, was obviously aimed at him. There was only one answer to such an accusation, and he had therefore instructed writs to be issued.
DOCTOR VERSUS PRIEST MARCH 1931
LIBEL AND SLANDER ACTIONS
JURY'S VERDICT
Sydney. Feb. 25. The hearing was concluded to-day: by Mr. Justice Davidson and a jury of four. of the action brought. By Hereward Leighton Kesteven, of Bulladeah, against. John Patrick Kelly, priest of the Roman Catholic Church, to recover £200 as damages for libel and slander. The jury, after an absence of 5 minutes, returned a verdict for the defendant on the counts alleging libel in the letters written by the priest to his parishioner, Mrs. Hickey, and to the plaintiff solicitors. On the count alleging slander by the priest in a statement from the altar, the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff for £100…….
SLANDER AND LIBEL MAY 1931
FASCIST LEADER IMPRISONED
BERLIN April 30. The Nazi (Fascist) Leader, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, failed to appear for trial to-day on seven charges of having slandered the police. He was sentenced to a month's imprisonment and fined £80, with a further fine of £50 for having libelled the German Administration.
"A SCURRILOUS SLANDER" NOVEMBER 1936
American Libel of Anzacs
MELBOURNE, Friday; Mention at the federal congress of R.S.S.I.L.A. at Adelaide yesterday of an article in the American magazine "Liberty," asserting that the Anzacs were sent to Gallipoli as punishment for conduct in Cairo, has excited 'wide spread resentment. Extracts were read to the congress by the federal president (Sir Gilbert Dyett) from a copy of the magazine, forwarded to Adelaide by Mr. N. A. Kelly, night editor of the Vancouver "Daily Province," himself an Anzac veteran, who has already protested from Vancouver to the editors of the magazine. The article is headed "Legion of Lost Souls," and is attributed to Captain W. J. Black ledge, who has written a number of articles in the magazine dealing, among other war incidents, with the siege of Kut el Amara and post-war Indiao. frontier campaigns. Black ledge claims to have obtained his facts regarding Gallipoli from "the deeply-engraved memories of Digger Craven, an Australian trooper." Quoting his informant, the writer says: "The men of the Anzac Corps were convinced that their presence on Gallipoli was the result of their behaviour in Egypt. I never met an Australian or New Zealander who did not hold that conviction." The article also gives a highly-coloured version of the Gallipoli landing. In revealing the contents of the article to congress Sir Gilbert Dyett re marked that everyone in Australia would realise that the statements were more than ridiculous, but people in other countries might be misled.
Cosen for Efficiency
CANBERRA, Friday. "A scurrilous slander on the men of the A.I.F.," was Sir George Pearce's comment to-day, when emphatically repudiating the report published in the American journal "Liberty" that the Australian troops were sent to Gallipoli as punishment for lack of discipline in Egypt. Sir George, who was Australia's Minister for Defence during the Great War, said high efficiency was revealed by the Australian forces during their training in Egypt, and accordingly they were selected for [inclusion] in the Gallipoli campaign.
"Too Foolish"
SYDNEY, Friday. Dr. C. E. Bean, the war historian, said to-day that Captain Blackledge's story was too foolish to merit comment. He considered that not one in each million American inhabitants would be really misled by such stories.
Saturday 5 March 2011
Fitz File Gems ... well said, Peter FitzSimons
PERFECT 10
TFF heard a nice yarn this week about a young girl, Pacha Luque-Light, dancing in front of a sign saying ''BUSKING FOR A BOARD'' at the Roxy Pro surfing event on the Gold Coast last Sunday. It was the day before her 10th birthday, and a surfboard was what she wanted … so she started dancing up a storm to the music coming from the portable CD player she had brought along for the occasion, while her proud mother watched on. People stopped, watched and started putting some coins in the old grey felt hat she had by the sign. The sun shone, the people smiled and Pacha danced. And then along came the 18-year-old North Narrabeen pro surfer Laura Enever, who not only stopped, but started dancing with her, as all the people smiled some more, before the pro surfer suddenly disappeared. She returned a short time later with one of her back-up surfboards, which she gave to the young girl. Using an indelible marker, she wrote these words on the board: "To Dear Pacha, You're the most amazing dancer EVER. Now have some fun in the surf. Laura Enever." In the words of her mother, "What a beautiful life lesson about kindness and generosity and spontaneity …" Precisely. Pacha has been on the board every day after school since, and if that isn't the best story in Australian sport this week, I don't know what is.WHAT THEY SAID
Aaron Baddeley, after fire engulfed his parents' house, tweeted: "2 min to get out 2 rooms were untouched! fam photos and my golf room with memorabilia! Amazed by God's protection 22 years of memories there." Good old God. A pity he couldn't stop the Christchurch earthquake though, what while saving your photos?
When political discourse goes bad an Australian MP 'dies' for almost two hours
If the Federal Independent Member for New England, Tony Windsor, has upset some voters by supporting Labor as a minority federal government after the August 2010 general election – then he has obviously also enraged others by being part of the committee which brought forth the carbon price mechanism proposal recently announced by the Gillard Government.
Below is but one example of the ire created by public political discourse to date.
At 1.24am on 4 March 2011 someone calling themselves Enidblyton11 edited a Wikipedia unauthorised biography page for the Independent Member for New England to read:
Antony Harold Curties "Tony" Windsor (2 September 1950 - 4 March 2011), an Australian politician, was the independent member of the House of Representatives since 2001, representing the Division of New England, New South Wales. Prior to his election to the federal parliament, Windsor was an independent member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1991 to 2001, representing the electoral district of Tamworth. He became the first federal political to be assasinated in Australian history.[1][2]
A later edit at 1.47am added the assassination claim in the page sidebar.
At 1.50am the claim on Wikipedia was added to in this manner:
He became the first federal political to be assasinated in Australian history (Yes Ray Hadley It's a hack, Just so you know, Wikipedia's articles are open to editing by the user, and is the nature of Wikipedia itself) .[1][2]
The last attempt to keep the political assassination claim alive on Wikipedia occurred around 2.33am and was finally removed by another around 3.02am.
Enidblyton11 had also added the claim to 2011 Australia where it survived until 3.10am.
At 4.41am Enidblyton11 stated that his account was hacked in order to perpetrate this startling and malicious hoax, however at least one other Wikipedia editor has disputed that assertion.
By 4pm Tony Windsor was being reported as stating that he is referring the matter to the Australian Federal Police.
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